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AN 



A D D R E S S^ 

DELIVERED BEFORE 

THE -;^.5;^ 

SOLDIERS AND CITIZENS 

OF BEDFORD, PA., 
JuLF 4, 1844. 



BY O. C. HARTLEY, ESQ. 



CHAMBERSBURG, PA. 

PRINTED AT THE PUBLICATION OFFICE OP THE GERMAN RBF. CHUBCtt. 

1844." 






>S^ 



Bedford, July 4, 1814. 
To O. C HARTLEY, ESQ. 

Dear Sir — Allow us, in behalf of the "Volunteers" we repre- 
sent, to return you our sincere thanks for the very learned, patriotic, and 
eloquent address you didjusthe kindness to deliver this day — and to ask 
the favor of a copy of the same for publication. 

Y'ours Respectfully, 

JAMES BOWMAN, 
SAMUEL TAYLOR, 
J. OTTINGEIl, 
JOHN JORDON, 
JOS. FILLER, 
JOHN CESSNA, 

Committee. 

Bedford, July 4, 1844. 
Gentlemen : 

I have just received your polite note, requesting on behalf of 
the volunteers, a copy of the Address which I this day delivered at our 
Celebration. Fourth of July Addresses have become so trite as, ge- 
nerally, to be listened to from considerations of patriotism rather than 
pleasure. You must, therefore, have discovered something original in 
the address, or you should certainly be unpardonable in publishing it. 
You are welcome, however it may be, to what is your own. I here- 
with send you the copy. 

Yours, Respdcifully, 

O. C. HARTLEY. 

To Messrs. James Bowman, Samuel Taylor, and others. 



V/,^; 



7 



SOLDIERS AND FELLO¥ CITIZENS : 

The celebration of the ruling events in a Nation's 
history holds up to view the spirit and figure of the 
age. It iLirnishes a palpable shape to the otherwise 
invisible activity and force with which a people as- 
sume a character and preserve it. The proverbs of 
a Nation and the songs of a Nation are said, correct- 
ly enough, to exhibit national peculiarity. But they 
are peculiarities in small things. It is the Anniver- 
saries to which we must look to find exhibitions of 
distinctness of nationality in those great matters 
which do not grow out as merely minute branches 
of tiie ruling idea, but are the germ itself of the w4iole 
social and political grov/th. It is the beauty and 
truth, too, of these anniversaries that they are whol- 
ly without object— that is, object distinct from them- 
selves. It is not to perpetuate the memory of the 
defeat of British Arms in America, by undisciplined 
militia-men, that we are assembled here to-day. Its 
effect is not to keep open the wounds inflicted by 
Old England in our childhood, while yet we were 
unarmed and unskilled. But it is the spontaneous 
action of the same spirit which produced the Decla- 
ration of Independence, bursting forth in the form of 
a memento of the glorious day on w^hich it received 



a shape and a name in the world. It is no Holyday 
decreed by Church or State. Its celebration is en- 
sured by no Society or association to effect unity 
of action. No ! — It is the legitimate power of our 
National character and soul, called into action by the 
associations connected with the day on which we 
are assembled. Considered in this light, what a 
grand and imposing spectacle does this nation upon 
this day present. From the St John's to the Sa- 
bine, from the wharves of the Atlantic far into the 
wilds of the western forests, they are assembled — 
not to solemnize the canonization of a saint, nor to 
celebrate the birth of any secular Hero, but, forced 
by the associations connected with the day, associa- 
tions which involve national existence, our peculiar 
character and the new idea upon which rests our so- 
social fabric, and from which is to rise the super- 
structures of future nations — into one universal ju- 
bilee of soul and spirit. It is not a something got 
up from without, like a show or bazaar — it is the 
voice of — '76 speaking from within. To-day the 
richest incense of soul ascends from the altar of eve- 
ry heart in this wide land, up to the Deity, that has 
smiled upon our birth and protected our Infancy. 
The odor of our adoration is like the fragrance of 
the wild flowers which inhabit our land, it is new — 
it is the natural effusion of our life, and like noth- 
ing that the world has ever known. 

In youth there is something loveable — whether it 
be the youth of a nation or of an individual. But 



5 

this must be a youth such as a nation and a man 
can pass bat once. It must be the entering of a 
new soul, or the fresh individualization of a new 
thought which has power over and through a half 
world of mind. How beautiful is even Greece in 
ker first years, castas she was inxhildhood amongst 
so barbarous company ! How loveable was Eome 
in her early days, whea appearing in the dress of 
affection cast around her by her Virgil and Livy ! 
But as a pure and holy spirit,, by its presence, de- 
prives evil ones of their disguise, how hag-like they 
appear, when compared to the young, pure, and 
holy spirit which has bounded from the brain of 
the Deity of the Western Hemisphere upon oui 
loved land of the States ! How natural is it, that the 
embodied spirit should remember the day of its birth! 
—How unnatural would it not be, if it should no^, 
at least while yet so young, give itself a holyday, 
leave the post to which it has advanced, and return 
for a single twenty four hours and call up, b^ 
memory's magic-mirror, the images of the first year* 
ofitsHfe, crowned, as they are, with magnolia anci 
laurel wreaths, won even so early in life, by the 
asylum spirit of Penn, and of Williams, and by the 
man-spirit of Bunker Hill and Yorktown ! This is 
the anniversary of that fourth of July, of that birth 
day, of that centre of a congeries of national affec- 
tions, which, as the grove and Touutain with their 
singing birds, we shall delight to visit once a year,, 

1* 



6 

till the end is accomplished, the impulse exhausted. 
And what a delightful pilgrimage of spirit and love 
does it not offer ! All the waters which flow through 
and refresh our social system, upon this day, return 
to the fountain head and receive a new impulse, 
teeming with fresh efficacy to heal and correct, 
what, through the whole past year, they may have 
failed to preserve in highest heaUh. How sweet is 
memory where it presents nothing we cannot but 
love and dwell upon with high-soulecj satisfaction ! 

Drawn together to day by a retro-attractive power 
of feeling, let us exaU our feeling into perspicuity 
of thought, and consider the origm of this nation, 
and afterwards the end of it. By our origin, I mean 
not the races and stocks from which we are descend- 
ed, for then, as a nation, we sliould have many or- 
igins which is contrary to the nature of things— and 
besides, we should then inevitably be a disconnect- 
ed collection — a tin rattle in the hands of mother 
nature, to divert her petulant children on the other 
side of the Atlantic. We are one people in mind, 
in spirit, in character altogether, and our origin is 
one. By our origin, I mean the source of the dif- 
ference between us and the nations from which we 
are descended. It is that which is the origin of our 
national character ; and it is the peculiarity of our 
national character as it developes a new advance- 
post, or position in the march of mind, which claims 
for us^ one origin as th^ descendants of our ancestors, 



and another as the ancestors of our descendants — •- 
or the new corner stone of an Anti-Babylon. It was 
the curse of man at one time, for his presumption 
and self-sufficiency, to be confounded in tongue, 
so that each came instantly not to understand the 
speech of his next hand man. It is the blessing ot 
this ai^e and nation, that now, and here, that curse 
is being withdrawn. From every land to which 
the different languages drove them, come architects 
not of Babylon, but of an Anti-Babyion — of a Na- 
tional mind and character, which, with the blessinor 
of Heaven, shall exalt man further into the clouds^ 
than the heathen ever dreamed of 

When Columbus discovered America, the Kino-s 
of Europe were in rare quarters. It was at the exact 
period when the spirit of that age reached the sum- 
mit of its ascent. It was the age of Kings — of the 
spirit of one-man-w^orship — the Lilliputian age of 
the last eighteen centuries. Knights, in full panoply 
af metal, stuck pins into Saracens. The Saracens 
were the Gulliver of the time. Just when the stal- 
wart knight was performing his most heroic deeds, 
he was the poorest spirited, most ignorant, little, 
contracted thing imaginable. Like terriers, they 
were hissed upon each other by masters whom they 
recognized by a sort of instinct. The whole cate- 
gory of man's rights and duties, that which above 
all exalts him above all nature around him, was an 
Eureka, which had not then been discovered 



8 

Through the whole sphere of mhid and things, this 
King-spirit had its highway, Nature received a 
dress from it. All Europe was robed in its vest- 
ments. There stood the palace with its turrets in 
the clouds, and its spacious and commodious apart- 
ments — its baths, its studs, its kennels, its rookery, 
its park, its forest, and the whole catalogue of ap- 
pendages and appurtenances of one man power. 
While here, at an humble distance, the land is 
spotted with, huts and habitations which might be 
demolished, and leave no ruins. Here toiled the 
cooks — there feasted the Gourmand — the dish was 
men's rights — he devoured them all. 

This was the situation of men when the Genoese 
Navigator opened up a new field, a new land where 
there were no palaces but of nature's own building. 
Among the middle class of men in Europe, were 
many spirits who felt the deprivation of their rights. 
With what joy they received the intelligence of the 
success of Columbus' visionary expedition can 
scarcely be imagined. Immediately they forsook the 
old world and came over to the new. In no respect 
were the rights of man being more violated than in 
that of religion and conscience. Hence came men , 
for conscience sake. In numbers they came, every 
one to escape some restriction or deprivation of right, 
which was most irksome to himself. Here lies the 
origin of our national form and spirit. Here is the 
first appearance of the germ of our peculiar charac-. 



9 

ter. In three centuries it ripened into the famous 
declaration of ''-'76" — ''ail men are born free and 
eq,ual." — Escaped from such a state of things in 
Europe, mind took a direction immediately oppo- 
site. It developed that which was but a spiritual 
repugnancy to the existing order of things, into an 
opposite order. This it is — the idea that "all men 
are born free and equal" — whicli lies at the bottom 
of every difference between this nation and all oth- 
ers of the civiUzed world. This then is our origin 
— that "all men are born free and equal," that man 
as the pride of the universe and the image of God, 
has a dignity which is repulsive to all restraint, ex- 
cept the laws which God gave him for his conduct 
and life. The discovery of that idea is our origin — 
our institutions embody it. 

The end of our Republic next demands our atten- 
tion. In the middle ages, the world of mind pre- 
sented a singular aspect. The nations of Europe 
turned their faces to the East and their backs to the 
West, and thus travelled backwards. Little wonder 
is it, if their progress was slow. The Pilgrim took 
his staffs girded up his loins and turned his back 
upon the setting sun, and set out for the sepulchre 
of Christ. The Monarch called his Knights and 
vassals, and with steel-clad front measured his 
march towards the Holy Land. But things are 
changed now. The Middle Ages are gone, and 
with them went darkness. The face is turned to- 



10 

wards the Occident. The Pilgrim girds him for a 
pilgrimage, not to the scenes of vain greatness, the 
sepulchre of nations and of Chri^^t, but towards the 
birth-place of a new greatness, and of the spirit of 
Christ. Pilgrims once, they are a nation now : but 
yet the end is far before them. 

The progress of nations is like the progress of 
men. When a genius has developed all his powers 
as far as they can be developed under the circum- 
stances in which he is placed, he dies and his ashes, 
like decaying crops, enrich the luxuriance of the 
next. The Genius born after him, is the exponent 
of the sam.e idea, somewhat exalted and sent by a 
fresh impulse. The one, however, cannot begin 
where the other left off. There must be a new 
birth, a new infancy. And it is not until he has 
reached maturity, that tie differepxe between the 
new and the old appears — it is then the idea receives 
extension — and again the genius dies. Just so it is 
with nations. When the force which set a change 
in motion is exhausted, the State falls to the earth 
like Actcus to gain a new impulse. The American 
lievolution was an exposition of the highest thought 
that ever had place in the mind of a w^hole people. 
But the impulse, like the vitality of man, becomes 
exhausted — and then follows a Revolution which 
imparts the required force. But revolutions are not 
the death of nations — far from it. They are evi- 
dence of the highest life. A Revolution is a reae- 



H 

tion. Where you see no revolutions, the mind ig 
next thing to dead — it is torpid. Through a long 
winter our trees are barren and changeless. They 
are long in putting forth buds, but the buds are 
soon blossoms, and the blossoms are soon fruit. So 
it is with men. The child is long in coming to the 
years of thought, and he travels slow and tediously. 
But when he approaches the season of his prime, 
he moves with metoric rapidity. And, as nations 
approach the consummation of the best social system, 
they demand more frequent re^/olutions, by which 
they are made equal in form to the change which 
has taken place in spirit. History tells not of a rev- 
olution in China. It tells of no advance there. 
Revolutions, then, we must anticipate — let our on- 
ly object be that they may be bloodless. There is 
little danger indeed of any Revolutions here being 
sanguinary. The old spirit — the one-man spirit is 
too weak to effect the shedding of blood in its favor. 
In many phenomena the observers of things profess 
to see the portents of the destruction of this Repub- 
lic. Some behold it in the extension of our territo- 
rial limits — others in the grant of the rights of free- 
men to all who come among us. — But ours is no 
pent up Utica. We are not a whift of tow that, 
when extended, breaks asunder. Like our own 
huge forest- trees, as we extend our branches, our fo- 
liage thickens, our shade deepens, our whole life 
increases, and the life-inspiring sap, none the less 



12 

for the vastness of our proportions, filters through 
every vein upon our utmost extremities. It is in 
this we differ again from Greece and Rome. Athens, 
with her exclusive right of citizenship, what was 
she ? A mongrel thing — a body of free individuals 
erecting themselves into a tyrant-nation. How ab- 
surd the idea — how untrue the spirit — it could not 
stand — all such contractions, from the laws of na- 
ture, destroy themselves. Kome, what was she ? 
Athens was but a pantomime. Rome was the full, 
bold, and whole realization of the age. Where 
were the equal rights of men-^where was the digni- 
ty of man ? In a Roman citizen. It was not the 
earth, the wide spread, beautiful earth, that was 
made to be enjoyed by a free and happy people, it 
was Rome, Rome, Rome. ^'I am," cried Verres, 
^'a Roman citizen." "I am," cried our oppressed 
ancestor, ^'a man." How expressive of the differ- 
ence between this Republic and that ? The one is 
the spirit of a pent up IJtica, the other the free, un- 
bounded spirit of the world. Let our own thirteen 
be the heart of a system which shall grow up around 
it and be nourished from the purifying fountain of 
its spirit, until in one we extend from sea to sea, 
and from the Isthmus to the Straits. It all may be 
revolutionized, but that one jot or tittle of the spirit 
of liberty shall be destroyed — 'tis fool-folly, to think 
of it. 

With such a prospect before you, to every pil- 
grim from oppression to this new holy land, extend 



13 

your hands. Lead theai to the young, the pure, 
the sublime, the beautiful west, and ^show them 
there, not the sepulchre of Christ, but his spirit, his 
grandeur, his glory. Oh for the memory's sake of 
our great hearted heroes, act not the Saracen's part 
ixi this : attempt not to hinder the pilgrim from see- 
ino" and touching this new altar, from worshipping 
at this last approved shrine of the Infinite. Exam- 
ine the Kooran which the prophets of '76 have 
transmitted to you. You will find there a spirit as 
general and wide reaching as the spirit of Holy- 
Writ. "All men are born free and equal," cries 
the father of the Declaration. "All men are born 
free and equal," resounds from every bosom from 
Maine to Georgia. Our forests take up the cry. 
The redmen of the Mississippi echo it : and it dies 
away in the heavy scamper of the Bison and wild 
horse as they bound through the western prairies. 
Oh that men's souls would always be open, large 
and all embracmg ; that there were no contracted 
spirits, who, while they climb the bread fruit tre^, 
plant spikes in the trunk to prevent others from as- 
cending to enjoy with them the gifts of God. 

The fact is, one prominent feature in this great 
19th century is quackery. Our stump and bar-room 
statesmen see in every movement of a different par- 
ty or sect, a traitorous attempt upon our constitution 
and Liberty ! No oue doubts there are many signs 
of change — and this very quackery is one of them. 

3 



14 

But are our wise men yet to learn that the changes 
of mind and spirit are regulated by laws as certain 
and fixed as are the changes of matter-the phenom- 
ena of nature. Who ever dreams of taking mea- 
sures to prevent a rain when he observes it descend 
the mountain, although an hundred acres of mea- 
dow lie all freshly mown. He would be guilty of 
no greater folly than the man who attempts to pro- 
long the present shape of this Government by re- 
stricting its territory, or men's rights of citizenship. 
The apple may be knocked by an ardent boy, a few 
days before it would fall from its own ripeness, but 
nevertheless, the fruit is perfect, and the seeds 
are ready to take root and grow again. 

It is the nature of government to assume a form, 
and preserve it for years, without a change. It is 
the nature of it, too, that when the change takes 
place, it must be sudden. This we call revolution. 
During the interval, all of the materials for the 
change are being piepared — just as the painter arran- 
ges his colors before he commences his work. And as 
different as is the picture upon the canvass from the 
paints in the vases, so diflerent is the established 
change from the forces w^hich produced it. England 
may contain all the colors to paint a beautiful Repub- 
lic-but, by some misfortune, they are all cast togeth- 
er into the same vase, with others, too, that ought 
not to be there. Revolutions, there, are prevented 
by an arbitrary power of which we here know noth- 
nig. Ours come as the laws of reason and all things 



15 

direct. What egregious folly then for men to speak 
of endangering our liberties. This Republic is not 
to be saved from ruin by one man or set of men — 
nor is it to be destroyed by another. Was it Caesar 
who destroyed the Eoman Republic ? The spirit 
of the Roman Republic was dead and buried before 
Csesar had a name. 

But while the ancient Republics perished entire- 
ly, ours can only change betimes — always endeavor- 
ing to make our institutions the more exactly con- 
tain the spirit of the Revolution. The reason is 
this. The essence of those Republics was a lie ; 
that their citizens only were born free and equal. 
The essence of ours is truth — "That^ all men are 
born free and equal.'' This is the rock, that is the 
sand. 

True it is, that constantly differences are spring- 
ing up between different parts of the union — dif- 
ferences in which some profess to see the incipient 
labors of dissolution. In a dissolution some behold 
an object of desire. Others deprecate it. We lament 
and deplore every scath or scar the union receives, 
A dissolution of our union ! The first step towards 
the division of this famous Republic of twenty six 
states into twenty six little Democratic animalculse. 
Who does not know that the further we extend our 
arms of political brotherhood, the higher, the nobler 
is the representation of the idea which determines our 
character. Imagine one mighty Republic stretching 



16 

from Beehring Straits to the Isthmus of Darien ! 
With what an overwhelming force would it not bring 
home the conviction to all minds, that ''all men are 
born free and equal." This is the object and end 
of this Republic. To develope the idea in which 
it had its origin. Turn the picture and view it all 
in the shape of small States. How sorry the con- 
trast ! — ''All men are born free and equal ?" These 
small voices only say, men born with in our boun- 
daries are "free and equal." The great Republic is 
an original of the 19th century — the small states 
would be but the repetition of the Grecian, the Ital- 
ian, the German. They differ from them now in 
their best quality, while they are members of the 
union — but sever them, and the one man spirit of 
Europe would be in upon them in an half century. 
I have shown the origin of this Republic— I have 
shown the end and object of it — which is to develope 
the idea that "all men are born free and equal," by 
receiving all men from all lands, and by extending 
itself over the North American Continent. The 
effects of disunion, supposing it possible, would plain- 
ly be the defeat of this end.— But there can be no 
disunion. Even if the union should be divided in 
this first half of the present century, it cannot re- 
main divided. Of the annihilation of our Spirit 
Republic I have not the slightest fear. The union 
may be scattered in fragments from New Brunswick 
to Texas, but from the wreck will rise a figure more 



17 

beautiful than the Goddess of Love upon the Ocean. 
To suppose a permanent dismemberment, you must 
take for granted the extinction of the spirit of — '76. 
They are incompatible. 

But the extinction of that spirit would be a re- 
treat in themarch of mind. So that if it is the des- 
tiny of man to advance towards the object of his 
existence, this Republic will forever remain one 
and undivided. It will extend from sea to sea, from 
the Isthmus to the Straits. And after all, this is 
not so visionary as some, (even while they cherish 
the idea of it,) may suppose. How large is this Re- 
public now ? It is but a fortnight's journey in 
length, and scarce so great in width. The same 
spirit which prompts this union of all the free, sets 
every man to work — to work for himself. This is 
another peculiar feature of our times — every man 
works for himself. Incited from indifference by an 
object and a hope, men have b een inventing labor- 
saving machines and approximating distant points, 
until they have almost nothing to do and no place 
to go to. Who can tell how long it will require in 
the next century to travel across our country from 
the Atlantic to the Pacific ! It is time that makes 
territory too large. Thus we can see that this spirit 
contains within itself the assurance of its own health 
and growth. While it would inspire an union of all 
the free, it makes it possible by overcoming the 
obstacle of distance of space. With such an origin 



18 

and object, how great and glorious must our Repub- 
lic be ! To bring about an union of all the free, 
until the stars upon our striped banner shall rival 
in number the stars of Heaven ! Yes, though trea- 
son has been openly avowed in our Legislative 
Halls, and the Capitol is rank with plots and schemes 
of self-aggrandizement, the destiny of this Re- 
public is over all — the fallen and mangled body of 
the traitor, and the the unmarbled grave of the 
mountebank ! But, for all that, our Flag Staff may 
be shot away, our musicians may lie dead upon the 
earth, our walls may be scaled, our cannon spiked, 
and our wives and children may be hid in the 
woods and caves — Then, Soldiers, will be the time 
to try men's souls again — then shall come a second 
'76 — and you shall be able to show whether this is 
all a mockery or a real manifestation ! 

Upon your fidelity and courage it will de- 
pend whether it shall be destruction or Revo- 
lution — whether the arrival of "William the Con- 
queror or the flight of James the 2d. But we 
need no prophets to tell us how it shall be. The 
laws of mind have already determined it. From 
the severest convulsions our system shall spring 
up again, clear, sparkling and bright, as the spray 
that dances in the sun, above the chafed waters. 
So our holy days shall increase, and we shall have a 
calendar of our own. In that calendar will be en- 
rolled the names of those vv^ho have done best their 



19 

duty to their country. With Washington at the 
}^ead — no one shall be forgotten down to the honest 
privates who refused the^gold of the English spy. 
Nor shall Arnold be forgotten — his day shall be eve- 
ry eclipse. As yet he stands alone, and he is entitled 
to them all. May no one disturb his solilude. 
Thus shall the patriots be remembered to be loved 
— and the traitors to be despised. And when at 
last the world shall be civiUzed and revolutionized 
after our fashion, this 4th of July shall be the great 
festival of all, as the day on which was first pro- 
claimed, in a nation's voice, the maxim and national 
proverb — '^all men are horn free and equaV 

NOTE. 

Lest I should be misunderstood, and should be suspected of being 
in favor of the incorporation of Guatimala in her present social and po- 
litical condition, and of Texas in violation of National faith, I M^ill add, 
that, as any one must perceive who reads the text carefully, I consider 
the object of this Uepubliajet far in the distance ; that it will not have 
been accmoplished before Texas, Mexico and the whole continent shall 
have been peopled with men as enlicrhtened in politics, as liberal in 
spirit, and as capable of enjoyinor civil liberty, as are the choice of our 
own citizens. The day and address having- had no connection with 
party politics, I should not have added this small protest, had it not 
been that every thing- now-a-days is viewed politically, and I might, 
altho' reasoning entirely on general principles, be accused of being in 
favor of the immediate annexation of Botany Bay. 



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